COMM 4243 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Nuclear Family, Stepfamily, Decision-Making
6 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
Definition: family with an adult couple and at least one child from a previous relationship (p 155) Prevalence: of all new marriages are remarriages for at least one spouse, in 1994, 1/3 kids will be in stepfamily at some point before 18. Simple stepfamily: only one person brings a child/children from a previous relationship. Complex stepfamily: when both people bring children from previous relationships: distinctions such as residential/nonresidential. Residential stepfamilies: the family a child stays with mostly. Non-residential stepfamilies: the family that a child does not usually stay with. Three societal views: affects how members of stepfamilies see each other and interact, shows that society idealized nuclear families. Incomplete institutionalization (cherlin: society doesn"t have a clear role for stepparents, expectations of how to be a stepparent are much less clear than parent, stepparents have fewer legal and moral responsibilities to children.
